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A Man Walks into a Bank

ft.com

1–10 of 184 posts

Re: A Man Walks into a Bank

#6
Could be some entirely different scam? Like they could write cheques in the names of old people with lots of money in the bank, then, if some people cash them in, they could approach them and ask for their money back. If some people comply and don't check carefully who the money originated from, they have extracted some money from random people who may or may not have noticed it.

Not sure how cheques work in the US, though - I think we don't have them anymore in Germany.

It is a common scam here to be asked to receive some payments on your bank account and pass them on. When the original owner discovers it, you are the culprit and not the scammer...

Re: A Man Walks into a Bank

#7
Am I missing something here?

The transit, bank and account number on the check must all be fake (or I would hope that this get-rick-quick company didn't actually send their real bank information!). So whether or not the check has non-negotiable printed on it is a mute point. The check cannot be routed anywhere and would have been flagged immediately. This is not the good ol' days of bank fraud, ala Catch Me If You Can.

Does the fact that he knowingly deposited a fake check constitute fraud in the US?

Re: A Man Walks into a Bank

#8
The question is, can this be repeated? Junk mail creators haven't necessarily seen this story, they may not know that they are in error.

Would some sort of penalty be applied to someone depositing such a check, assuming one received such a check and it does have all the necessary features?

Re: A Man Walks into a Bank

#9
I'm sorry, but from what I know of banking law (ianal, nor do I play one on the Internet, but it helps to know enough to defend yourself from banks)... why isn't he in jail? I thought knowingly doing what he did constitutes bank fraud and numerous other charges?

Re: A Man Walks into a Bank

#10
This story was from a little while back but what's to stop you just printing a cheque from someone else and paying it into a bank today? There's no alerting to the originator that a cheque's been paid out and there are no obvious authentication tokens on the cheques.

Frank Abignale only had to get past an initial look-test so what techniques protect against (and are consistently used) to prevent cheque forgery today?

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